The Discalced Carmelite Family is a religious Order
in the Roman Catholic Church. We, the members, trace our roots back
to the ancient hermits on Mount Carmel, Israel, in the thirteenth century.
Like them, we try to follow Christ with special emphasis on Scripture
and prayer. In this we take Mary as our model. This way of life was
reinterpreted for us in the sixteenth century by St Teresa of Avila
with the help of St John of the Cross. That is why we are sometimes
today referred to as "Teresian Carmelites". This family includes not
only friars and nuns but also lay people in all walks of life. In this
website we tell you about ourselves, how we live and what we do.

The emblem used by the Carmelites is old, but no printed copy appears before
about 1500.

It shows the mountain Carmel (in the Holy Land) with a cross
on top of it, and three stars. The mountain is Mt Carmel, in what is now Israel,
where the first hermits gathered in imitation of the lives of the prophets.
The cross on it reminds us of the central importance of the victorious death
of Christ. Below is one star, representing Mary, first among the redeemed, who
stood at the foot of the Cross, and on either side two others, to represent
the prophets most associated with the Carmelite origins and ideals, Elijah and
John the Baptist.

Some think that the central star was originally thought of as
an opening, not a star, which represented the cave in which Elijah sheltered
when the Lord appeared to him as the still small wind. This suits the silent
and separated life of Carmel, away from the busy-ness of ordinary life